Forging America: My Campaign Manager is Roosevelt

Chapter 456: Chapter 212: Saints

Luigi walked into the house.

It was a typical old-fashioned apartment, small but kept very clean.

A Cross and a portrait of the Holy Mother Mary hung on the wall, and some cardboard boxes were stacked in a corner of the living room.

"Go up to the attic," Rosa said, pointing to a ladder in the corner of the living room. "No one ever goes up there. Even if the police come to search, they won’t bother with a place that’s covered in dust."

Luigi nodded and climbed the ladder.

The attic was low-ceilinged, a triangular space with a sloped roof. An adult would have to stoop to move around.

The only window was covered with a thick black cloth, not letting in a single sliver of light.

Rosa turned on the dim, yellow incandescent light on the attic ceiling.

The moment the light came on, Luigi froze.

He had assumed it was just a storage room for odds and ends.

But he was wrong.

All four walls were plastered with paper.

Not newspapers, not posters, not wallpaper.

They were bills.

Bills, dense and overlapping in layer upon layer.

Red ones, blue ones, white ones.

They were like some kind of grotesque decoration, covering every inch of the walls and even spreading onto the ceiling.

Luigi put down his backpack and moved closer to one of the walls.

He could make out the contents of the papers.

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Hospitalization Invoice: $48,500.00.

Apex Health Insurance Notice of Claim Denial: Reason Code C-14 (Non-essential medical procedure).

Ambulance Service Collection Notice: $2,400.00.

Final Notice of Overdue Pharmacy Balance: $8,900.00.

And countless red letters: Final Demands, Delinquencies, Legal Actions.

Luigi’s fingers brushed lightly across the coarse papers.

He could feel the chill seeping through from behind them.

He had killed a CEO.

When that CEO died, he bled all over the floor.

’But these papers... they have no blood, but they devour people.’

Behind him, he heard the ladder creak.

Rosa was climbing up, carrying a tray.

On the tray was a bowl of steaming chicken soup, two slices of toasted bread, and a glass of water.

She set the tray on a small, three-legged table.

"Eat," Rosa said. "You need your strength."

Luigi looked from the bills to Rosa.

"This is..."

Rosa sat down on an old wooden crate nearby, her gaze sweeping over the walls.

"These were left by my husband, Miguel."

Rosa’s voice was calm.

"He was a good man. He worked on construction sites for thirty years, never slacked off, and never owed anyone a dime. He thought that if he bought insurance, he’d be saved if he got sick."

"Two years ago, he started coughing. Coughing up blood."

"Lung cancer, stage three."

Rosa pointed to the most prominent denial notice in the middle of the wall.

"The doctor said there was a new targeted therapy drug that was very effective. It couldn’t cure him, but it could let him live for two more years, reduce his pain, and let him see his little grandson be born."

"We submitted the claim."

"First, there was the nine-thousand-dollar deductible."

"The policy stated it very clearly. The insurance company wouldn’t pay a single cent until we had paid that nine thousand out of pocket."

"We sold the car, borrowed from all our relatives, and scraped together the ten thousand dollars for the first month so the doctor could prescribe that life-saving new drug."

"Miguel took it. The pain went away. He could even get out of bed and walk around."

"But when we applied for reimbursement, they blocked us again."

"They said it was an experimental therapy, not on their list of standard covered treatments. They said it had to be approved by a special medical review committee, and that the process was complicated and would take time."

"They were clearly just stalling. Miguel was in bed coughing up blood while they were in their offices, pushing papers."

"Later, their representatives came."

"Two men in suits sat in our living room. They took out a pile of forms and data."

"They said that according to their actuaries’ assessment, the value of Miguel’s expected remaining lifespan was far lower than the cost of treatment with this new drug. To them, continuing treatment was an ’inefficient allocation of medical resources.’"

"They even ’kindly’ reminded us that the final audit would most likely still be a denial, so we shouldn’t get our hopes up."

"They advised us to give up."

"They said, ’For the financial health of your family, it’s best not to waste any more money. Leave it for the living.’"

Luigi clenched his fists.

He recognized those words.

Resources, cost, value.

In the spreadsheets of those capitalists, a human life was nothing more than these things.

"Miguel heard them."

Rosa looked at her own rough hands.

"That night, he told me he didn’t want the treatment anymore. He said he didn’t want me and the children to be saddled with a debt we could never repay, all for his sake. He said he was tired."

"I begged him. I said we’d sell the house, that we’d live in a basement, as long as he was alive."

"He agreed. He smiled and said okay, that we’d sell the house tomorrow."

"That night, I was so tired, I just fell asleep."

Rosa’s voice faltered.

"At three in the morning, I woke up because it was too quiet. Usually, the oxygen machine would make a sound when he breathed."

"But that day, there was no sound."

"He had pulled out the oxygen tube himself."

"He left the half-finished bottle of medicine on the bedside table. Underneath it, he’d placed a note: ’Return this, get some money back.’"

A dead silence filled the attic.

Only the dim yellow bulb emitted a faint SIZZLE.

Luigi felt as if an icy hand had seized his heart.

’I’m a killer.’

’I pulled the trigger in the name of so-called justice, ending a person’s life.’